Passages from the American Notebooks, Volume 1 by Nathaniel Hawthorne
page 20 of 194 (10%)
page 20 of 194 (10%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
or of their own nature and destiny. They, perhaps, to be described as
working out this knowledge by their sympathy with what they saw, and by their own feelings. Memorials of the family of Hawthorne in the church of the village of Dundry, Somersetshire, England. The church is ancient and small, and has a prodigiously high tower of more modern date, being erected in the time of Edward IV. It serves as a landmark for an amazing extent of country. A singular fact, that, when man is a brute, he is the most sensual and loathsome of all brutes. A snake, taken into a man's stomach and nourished there from fifteen years to thirty-five, tormenting him most horribly. A type of envy or some other evil passion. A sketch illustrating the imperfect compensations which time makes for its devastations on the person,--giving a wreath of laurel while it causes baldness, honors for infirmities, wealth for a broken constitution,--and at last, when a man has everything that seems desirable, death seizes him. To contrast the man who has thus reached the summit of ambition with the ambitious youth. Walking along the track of the railroad, I observed a place where the workmen had bored a hole through the solid rock, in order to blast it; but, striking a spring of water beneath the rock, it gushed up through the hole. It looked as if the water were contained within the rock. A Fancy Ball, in which the prominent American writers should appear, dressed in character. |
|